


The Freakiest Show

by yunitsa



Category: Doctor Who, Life on Mars (UK)
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-05-12
Updated: 2007-05-12
Packaged: 2017-10-02 16:19:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yunitsa/pseuds/yunitsa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wacky crossover fun.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Freakiest Show

**Author's Note:**

> A bit of silliness, inspired by the fact that modern-day time-travellers have such a limited range of surnames.

"Excuse me," the man in the pinstripe suit and trainers says, "but can you tell me what year it is?"

"Oh, ha bloody ha," says Sam, pushing past him. "Which one of the CID boys put you up to this?" He doesn't wait for an answer (Ray, probably), but at the next corner the man is there again.

"No, seriously," he says. "We were aiming to catch The Clash, but it all got a bit wonky near the end."

"You're out of luck there, mate," Sam answers, "I don't think they even get together for three more years," before what he's saying sinks in and he stops dead in his tracks in the middle of the busy Manchester street. And then, obeying a habit whose source he doesn't want to think about right now, he grabs the stranger by his lapels and pushes him up against the brick wall. "_Who are you_?"

"Could ask you the same thing," the man says, unperturbed. "No wonder we were pulled here, with another time-traveller about."

"Another time-traveller!"

"Oi," some kid with an appalling haircut and a vague expression interrupts. "Whatcha…?"

Sam flashes his badge, but he has to let go of the stranger's coat to do it. He straightens it, regarding Sam with interest. "What's your name, then?"

"Detective Inspector Sam Tyler," he says, though he feels that he should be the one asking the questions.

"Tyler, eh." His face brightens. "Could always use another Tyler about."

"_Another_ Tyler?"

"Yeah. You should come and meet her."

"I ought to take you in for questioning," Sam says, but he knows that he doesn't sound very convincing. What's he going to charge him with, anachronistic knowledge of punk music?

"I'd rather you didn't," the stranger says, his eyes open earnestly. "My place is much nicer." And as Sam follows him numbly down a side alley, feeling that his life has started obeying dream-logic once again, he adds, "I'm the Doctor, by the way."

*

His place is definitely much nicer than the Lost and Found at the station. "It's bigger on the inside," Sam notes, not even surprised anymore.

"So they say." He looks smug. "_And_ it travels in time and space."

"A time machine." He shakes his head, as though that will dislodge some of the madness from it. "Why didn't I get one of these?"

The Doctor leans against the central console, his long legs crossed. "About that," he says, but at moment a blonde girl comes barrelling down the staircase like a pink whirlwind.

"Who've you got there?" she demands.

The Doctor waves a hand. "Sam Tyler, meet Rose Tyler. Any relation?"

Sam's head spins. The blonde girl narrows her heavily-made-up eyes at him. "Too young to be my grandfather or something, isn't he?" she says doubtfully.

"Oh, thanks."

Rose circles around him, eyeing him up appraisingly, and then breaks into a grin. "Just look at him! That _shirt_, oh my God. He looks so…seventies."

"And you don't," Sam snaps. She's wearing some sort of fringed thing with lots of glitter, and her hair is frizzed into curls.

"This is seventies," Rose says, pulling at her top-slash-dress. "My mum had one of these."

Sam refrains from stating what he thinks of Rose Tyler's mother's fashion sense, but only just. He's got more pressing concerns.

"So, DI Tyler," the Doctor says. He hasn't moved from his mock-casual lean by the console. "Mind telling us what brings you here?"

"I got hit by a car." He looks around at all the gleaming -- almost _organic_ \-- surfaces of this time-machine-or-whatever-it-is, and feels almost embarrassed. "I think I'm in a coma."

The Doctor snaps his fingers in front of his face. "Doesn't look like a coma to me. And trust me, I'm a doctor."

"No, but I mean -- this is all in my head. It's got to be. People don't just go around waking up in 1973."

"I have," the Doctor remarks. "Course, I had to fall asleep in 1973 first, so I see your point. Except for New Year's. Then I would've fallen asleep in 1972, except that I didn't actually at all. Good party, that one."

"It's OK," Rose says. "Just ignore him when he's like that."

Sam puts his head in his hands. At least before now, the fantasy had _some_ sort of verisimilitude…

"So you think you're dreaming all this up," the Doctor says. "But it sure looks like time travel to me. What year did you say you were from?"

"2006," Sam says through his fingers.

"Ooh, same as me!" Rose chirps.

"Seriously?" he peeks up at her. "Ipods and mobiles and the Internet and all that?"

"Yeah." She takes something out of her pocket and tosses it as him.

"You've got a signal," Sam says, staring down at the mobile. "How have you got a signal?"

She shrugs. "The Doctor did something to it. Means I can use it to call my mum back home."

"I get calls from my mum sometimes. From disconnected telephones. Or the TV at night. One time they said they were going to turn off my life-support, but Gene had a whisky flask in his pocket so that was…" He's babbling, he knows. He can hear faint beeping on the inside of his skull, which may be the machinery in this bizarre place or may be something else.

"Interesting," the Doctor says. He turns to the console and starts fiddling with it, pulling levels and pressing big colourful buttons. It's actually pretty seventies, too. "Seems like the best thing to deal with your problem, Sammy-me-boy, would be to go back to 2006 and see if there's a Sam Tyler there in hospital. And then we can figure out what happened to you, and get you home."

"Don't call me that," Sam says automatically, though he supposes it's better than "Gladys". He feels numb -- he hasn't even come into work today, and now he'll just go off with some pinstriped tosser who says he's got a time machine -- just vanish into thin air….Which is what he's been wanting all along, isn't it, minus the tosser and the bird in pink?

"By the way," the Doctor adds, still playing with buttons, "you haven't been doing anything while you've been here -- playing with time, trying to change history, that kind of thing?"

"Not…" He hesitates. "Not exactly history. I tried to stop my dad from leaving my mum and me, but that didn't work. And apparently he wasn't that great of a guy anyway."

He sees the Doctor and Rose exchange a look, and for some reason she flushes pinker than her fringed monstrosity. "Oh, what _is_ it," the Doctor mutters, pushing the last button that will send them hurtling off through time and on to some fresh kind of insanity, "with these humans and their daddy issues?"

_ Annie: So no more funny stuff?  
Sam: Funny stuff?  
Annie: You know. The whole time travel, out of body experience thing.  
Sam: Well, I went to see Doctor Who and he prescribed me some pills, so…__ _


End file.
